When he was 16, Steven James Hunter moved out of home to rent a place with his 15-year-old girlfriend.

He had a ''mightily disturbed'' upbringing, but also moved to ensure his sexual gratification: the pair would always have the house to themselves. The relationship did not last.

Sarah Cafferkey.

Five years later, Hunter would kill a young woman who did not fulfil his lust. And 26 years, five convictions and three stints on parole later, he did it again.

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Hunter will face a pre-sentence hearing on Monday for the murder of Sarah Cafferkey in 2012.

In 1986 he murdered Jacqueline Mathews.

Steven James Hunter pictured after his arrest for the murder of Sarah Cafferkey. Photo: Justin McManus

Both women, one 22 and the other 18, were attractive, vivacious and outgoing. Both were stabbed to death by Hunter.

Justice Howard Nathan said when sentencing Hunter in 1988 for the murder of Ms Mathews that he was a ''young man of some promise''. Hunter faces the Supreme Court having pleaded guilty to murdering Ms Cafferkey as a 47-year-old who has spent most of his adult life in prison.

''She was an attractive, vivacious and outward going young woman; she had an appealing nature,'' Justice Nathan said of Ms Mathews.

''But she certainly seems to have aroused some of your basest instincts and for that she should carry no blame or reprobation.

''A court … can only conclude that your crime was motivated by lust, one of the age-old precipitators of crime, and that that lust unsatisfied, as it now appears, led to her death.''

Ms Mathews was working part time at the Safeway in Gladstone Park with Hunter. She needed the money to help pay her way through high school.

Hunter was working as many as three jobs to support his partner and young son. To cope with the long hours, he regularly used speed.

He once kissed Ms Mathews and told colleagues ''now that I have had a taste of her I won't rest'', or words to that effect.

On April 9, he left the supermarket with Ms Mathews in her car.

They stopped in the car park of another supermarket about five minutes away in Tullamarine.

Hunter said he was kissing and cuddling Ms Mathews, and then she rejected him. He stabbed her seven times in the throat and heart.

Hunter returned to work, got his best mate, returned to the crime scene, concocted a plan to burn the body, went back to the supermarket to get a can of petrol, then drove to a remote location to destroy the remains.

Ms Mathews' body was burnt beyond recognition.

He then returned to the supermarket and finished his night shift. Later, he would claim Ms Mathews had wanted him to leave work with her so she could have her way with him.

Despite the efforts to conceal the crime, he said his remorse left him suicidal and he farewelled his son knowing he might not see him again for a long time.

''Your story of the deceased girl abducting you to a quiet place in order for her to make sexual advances upon you is so patently absurd that it needs only to be stated to have its ridiculousness revealed,'' Justice Nathan said.

''It was put by way of mitigation that you were mortified by the events after you killed this girl and that I should see remorse in your soul. There is some evidence to support that.

''But I cannot accept that your remorse shortly after this event went any further than self-preservation on your part.''

Hunter had prior convictions.

In 1983, as an 18-year-old, he was convicted of burglary and theft, criminal damage and discharging a missile for throwing a rock through a shop window and stealing gloves.

In October that year, he was convicted of assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and carrying an offensive weapon after he got in a fight. He was fined $800.

Four months later, he was convicted of being on premises without a lawful excuse.

Justice Nathan ignored all but the assault convictions in sentencing him to 16 years' prison with a 13-year minimum, saying the ''penalty should not extinguish all the chances in life you may have''.

He escaped from Pentridge Prison two years and a day after sentencing, and would be in and out of prison, or on parole, until November 1, 2012, when his parole for drug and theft offences ended.

Nine days later, he stabbed Ms Cafferkey 19 times in the head, neck, chest and abdomen. Then he put her body in a wheelie bin and covered it with concrete. Finally, he lit a fire, and tossed in Sarah's belongings.

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